Index

NEWSLETTER 14, JULY 2001 Report from France Campaign for ethical public procurements

Since January 2000, "De l'éthique sur l'étiquette" collective (the French CCC) has been working on a campaign to lobby for ethical public procurement.

In April 2001 more than 130 municipalities voted to support a statement in which they say they want to be ethical consumers and will act accordingly. This includes municipalities in Calais,Valence, Lyon, Le Mans, Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, and Reims. This was quite a success, considering that the campaign's goal was to gain support from 50 municipalities.

Now, the French campaign is trying to create a network of "ethical consumer cities." Such cities would be involved in:

• working with the French CCC to create a social label. This means asking their suppliers to adopt the CCC model code (for technical reasons, the text will be adapted for public procurements) and participate in pilot projects on independant verification with some of their suppliers; and
• lobbying the government to increase possibilities for linking public procurement and good working conditions.

The towns of Tourcoing and Dunkerque (socialist), and Epinal and Sisteron (conservative) have agreed to coordinate such a network. The Regional council Nord-Pas de Calais (near Belgium) will soon decide if they will join/coordinate the network.

To support this initiative, the French campaign launched a campaign targetting candidates in the March 2001 municipal elections. Almost 200 local leaders from all the political parties, in 100 towns which have not already agreed to support ethical public procurements (including 20 towns that have more than 100,000 inhabitants) said that they will propose the adoption of a political statement on that issue if they are elected (among these are Toulouse, Bourges, Roubaix, Nantes, Montpellier, Avignon, and Limoges).

Companies

In May 2000, the campaign published a "report card" (carnet de note), inspired by the report cards that are given to the school students to evaluate their work. The French CCC decided to do the same with France's top retailers in the two sectors they have targetted during their campaigns: hypermarkets and sporting goods retailers (14 companies in all).

When the French CCC launched their first campaign in 1995, no French retailer had a code of conduct. In early 2000 nine retailers out of the 14 surveyed had a code or a similar standard for engagement. Two of them, Auchan and Promodès, (Promodes is now a part of Carrefour) refer to all the standards included in the CCC code and have begun to take some steps towards implementation. Five companies have not taken any steps at all.

The publication of the report card, the media publicity and the letters sent by consumers to the companies had a positive impact. Two companies, Leclerc and Intermarché, appointed staff members to work on a strategy for ethical trade and a code of conduct. The CCC has met with two people from Intermarché to discuss this. Super U is working on a social charter. Cora and Casino, which have a common buying office ("Opera") now makes reference to SA 8000 standards and finances external social audits ("SGS style").

Next step: Toy campaign 2001

For Christmas 2001 the French CCC will be launching a toy campaign (which will probably run for two years) and will publish a pétition and a new report card. This campaign will target big retailers (50% of the toys are sold in France by hypermarkets such as Carrefour and Leclerc) and 25% by specialised retailers who only sell toys (the biggest ones are Toys-R-Us, La grande récré, and JouéClub).